The present invention relates to photography, and in particular to programmable apparatus for controlling a camera during time lapse photography.
Time lapse photography is a process which enables slowly occurring events to be studied at a faster than normal rate. This is accomplished by taking a sequence of photographs over an extended period of time, and then viewing the photographs, usually in the form of a movie, over a time period which is much shorter than the period over which the photographs were taken.
Time lapse photography is, for example, frequently used by nature enthusiasts and scientists. The nature photographer who aims his camera at a live flower bud can, by taking a series of exposures over a one or two day period, capture the blossoming of the bud into a flower. If the photographer takes on picture every couple of minutes, and then develops his film and runs these pictures, in sequence, at the rate of several frames per second, the result will be a movie where the entire development of the bud into a flower can be viewed over a period of a minute or so. Thus, events which naturally occur too slowly to understand can be viewed at an increased rate of speed by using time lapse photography.
Past equipment for enabling a photographer to engage in time lapse photography has been buly, heavy, and expensive. Such equipment put a nature photographer, for example, at a severe disadvantage because it was difficult to carry such equipment into the wildlife areas that the nature photographer desired to photograph. Further, time lapse photography apparatus available prior to the present invention has been found to be inconvenient to set up and use, and has very few user-oriented features. For example, such prior apparatus only allowed a user to set one exposure interval for the time lapse photography, with each exposure having the same duration. In other words, while such prior apparatus generally enabled a user to take as many exposures as he wanted, each exposure would be of the same duration and the amount of time ("exposure interval") between successive exposures would always be identical.
It is desirable in certain situations to take successive time lapse photographs at different exposure intervals. Thus, for example, a photographer may desire to take a photograph of a developing flower bud once every minute during the morning hours, once every 15 minutes during late morning hours, once every hour during the afternoon, and then return to shorter intervals during the evening. The photographer will, of course, choose the exposure intervals in accordance with the object being photographed, and the nature of the result he is seeking. This ability has not been present in time lapse apparatus available in the past.
Another desirable feature is the ability to manually override the time lapse apparatus, after it has been programmed, so that an exposure can be made on the spur of the moment, if necessary. An example of when such a feature is necessary is when a photographer is interested in observing, through time lapse photography, an animal's environment. In such an instance, the photographer may want to study, for example, a mole. If the photographer aims his camera at the hole in the ground in which the mole lives, he could take time lapse photographs of the mole every 15 minutes. If the mole left or entered the hole between exposures, this event would be entirely missed by the time lapse photography. If, however, a string or other trigger machanism were placed over the hole so that the animal actuated the trigger upon entering or leaving the hole, this trigger mechanism could be used to manually override the programmed time lapse intervals and effect an exposure which would photograph the animal as it entered or left the hole. The time lapse mechanism could then continue its programmed routine of making an exposure every 15 minutes.
It would therefore be advantageous to have a time lapse programmer which is capable of being externally triggered to effect exposures outside of the programmed intervals. It would also be advantageous to have a time lapse programmer capable of taking a plurality of exposures ("exposure sequences"), at different exposure intervals between each sequence. It would also be advantageous to provide a time lapse programmer wherein the actual duration of each exposure could be programmed. Such a time lapse programmer should be portable, light weight, and economical.
The present invention relates to such a time lapse programmer.